


new year's day

by light_loves_the_dark



Series: ooh you and me would be a big conversation [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers Family, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Civil War Fix-It, Don't question me - Freeform, F/M, Fluff and Angst, How many, IronWidow - Freeform, Mostly Fluff, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Protective Natasha Romanov, Rewriting all the Movies, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Trust Issues, basically a lot of feelings, can i write?, so many
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_loves_the_dark/pseuds/light_loves_the_dark
Summary: “If this was your last birthday party you were ever going to have, how would you celebrate it?”Natasha doesn’t drop her gaze from Tony’s, watching the way he rubbed his forehead as if staving off an oncoming headache. She knows she can rile him up with only a few words, encourage him to act out in hopes that it will drive him to some revelation about the infection that looms like a dark cloud above him. She wonders if she could even talk him into turning this party into an international incident - it’s the kind of crazy idea that might cause the chaos needed for him to get his act together.But Natasha is growing fond of this man behind the armor, more than she’d care to admit. It is her fondness for him that stays her prepared phrase about doing whatever he wants. Years later, she will admit that it is his eyes, hopeful and teasing but also lost and melancholy, that causes her to let whatever is left of Natasha answer him instead of Natalie.“I’d spend it with a good bottle of vodka and someone who loves me,” she admits, letting Natalie’s smile quirk at her lips.akathe one where i retrace tony and natasha through every marvel movie they’re in - with them as the end game.





	1. the party

**Author's Note:**

> hi all!! so this is an ongoing project... part of a LARGER project of me writing ironwidow fics for every song on taylor swift's album,,, if you wanna help me, drop me a comment with an idea that involves one of the songs or hmu on tumblr at @queeenpersephone!
> 
> hope you like this idea!!

 

_don’t read the last page - but i stay_

_when you're lost and i'm scared and you’re turning away._

 

-

  
  
“If this was your last birthday party you were ever going to have, how would you celebrate it?”  
  
Natasha doesn’t drop her gaze from Tony’s, watching the way he rubbed his forehead as if staving off an oncoming headache. She knows she can rile him up with only a few words, encourage him to act out in hopes that it will drive him to some revelation about the infection that looms like a dark cloud above him. She wonders if she could even talk him into turning this party into an international incident - it’s the kind of crazy idea that might cause the chaos needed for him to get his act together. She knows Fury is getting impatient working from California.

But Natasha is growing fond of this man behind the armor, more than she’d care to admit. After years of not caring who he hurts, who he kills, he is atoning for his mistakes and paying for his atonement with his life. He has the same color ledger that she does, the same kind of mask that she is showing him right now. Hers is flirty, his is carefree, but they are masks all the same.

It is her fondness for him that stays her prepared phrase about doing whatever he wants. Years later, she will admit that it is his eyes, hopeful and teasing but also lost and melancholy, that causes her to let whatever is left of Natasha answer him instead of Natalie.

“I’d spend it with a good bottle of vodka and someone who loves me,” she admits, letting Natalie’s smile quirk at her lips. No need to show him too much, not that the latter half of the statement could ever become true for her anymore. Maybe someone who appreciated and knew her, like Clint, but never love. She doubts anyone is capable.

And just like that, the teasing fire drops from Tony’s eyes. He looks like a man out of time, out of answers. She can read his mind, the questions that she has planted there. Will he be satisfied with tonight? Is a party going to heal the poison in his heart, even for a moment?

Even if the answer is no, she doubts he will back down from drowning his problems in alcohol. He is still that billionaire playboy, one who believes money and girls and drinks can solve all his problems, even if part of him is now this new thing - this vigilante hero.

She goes to stand, mentally readying herself for a night of trying not to kill all the drunk men that eye her when, for the first time, Tony Stark truly, genuinely surprises her.  
  
“You know what? I _should_ cancel the party. In fact, cancel the party, Rushman,” he orders, like it’s nothing. She can tell by the way he’s avoiding her gaze that it’s definitely something.  
  
Not something she’s willing to question, though it might be better for SHIELD to galvanize him into some action. Yet, Natasha thinks it will be something unexpected that causes Tony to stop feeling sorry for himself and start working on a solution. She plans to find it, whatever it is.  “Yes, sir,” she agrees, not bothering to hide her disbelief. Natalie would be as surprised as Natasha.  
  
Tony just winks at her, delighting her uncharacteristically wide eyes. “I’m gonna go get the good stuff from downstairs. Drink with me?” He offers it casually.  
  
Natalie is demur as Natasha claws at the opportunity. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate, Mr. Stark.” She averts her gaze, but she leans forward, letting her long hair brush his shoulder. They are closer now, though she keeps herself perched firmly on the arm of the chair. No need to get too close, though attraction bubbles up in her veins. It’s not the first time a mark has been her physical type.

As she lets herself sway barely closer, watching as Tony’s eyes grow darker, she wonders whether he is truly following her advice or if he had planned on calling off the party long before she had arrived. If he really wants to drink with someone who loves him, he would call Pepper or General Rhodes. She thinks that maybe he wants to drink with someone who knows him but doesn’t really _know_ him. The agent in her is happy to take advantage of the situation, but she has to admit Natasha herself is curious.    
  
Tony just grins up at her; he knows he’s already won. “I overheard you on the phone with Pep - don’t give me that look! - and she said that you had to keep an eye on me, Natalie.” He raises an eyebrow. “How are you supposed to do that if you’re not, y’know, on my level?”  
  
Natalie smirks prettily, standing. “I’m certain that it would be easier to keep an eye on you if I wasn’t on your…” - here Natasha allows herself to roll her eyes, though she lets them soften too - “ … level. Now, if you’re certain, I’m going to have to make some calls.” A slight grimace crosses her face at the thought of all the calls she’s about to make. Tony gives her a knowing smirk.  
  
He gestures her out of the room, and she goes, pressing number two on speed dial.  
  
“Yes, Miss Potts? I have some good news…”

-

  
Natasha is drunker than she’d usually allow on a job, but Tony’s eyes are dark and intent on her; she can’t discretely pour the whiskey into a nearby plant as she intended. The whiskey is strong and expensive and American, and despite her tastes in liquor running Russian, she is enjoying it.  
  
They are several bottles in when things start to get serious. “You know, Na-ta-lie,” he begins, drawing out each syllable of her alias. They are sitting on the bright red couch in his workshop; it is covered with nuts and bolts and wrenches, so they have had to situate themselves carefully to avoid the mess. Natasha’s shoes are two feet away, one on its side, and Tony has discarded his jacket across one of the robots. The lighting is low, and they are interrupted every minute or so by a series of beeps from Dum-E.  
  
“Nat,” she corrects before she can stop herself. “My friends call me Nat.”  
  
Tony looks at her with warmth; through glassy eyes, his gaze shows a version of himself to which Natasha has never been privy. “Nat,” he agrees, like silk and honey.  
  
She swallows hard. Natalie would swallow hard.  
  
“This superhero thing is probably gonna kill me,” he confides, his eyes falling away from her. They focus on a point above her head, and she gets the feeling he isn’t with her anymore.  
  
There’s no way to tell him that she knows it’s not just a hypothetical. At the moment; thick black lines are crawling all over his chest, drawing his life to a close, and Natalie doesn’t know. “Well,” she teases, trying to lighten the mood, “I’m planning to stick it out until the end.” Natalie would reassure her boss. She’s positive, flirty, enamored by the man behind the armor. So far, Natasha hasn’t seen much that encourages her that he’ll find a way out of this by himself, but she knows that man is there. The man that found his way out of the hands of terrorists with his own bare hands. The man who shut down the weapons department of a weapon manufacturing company without a thought to his fortune. The man who cancelled the party of a lifetime because she was honest with him.

Natasha wants to peel back the layers of this billionaire playboy to find that man underneath, and she doesn’t only want to do it as a SHIELD agent.

Her words of comfort turn out to be a good intuitive leap. His eyes focus back on her, as contemplative as one can be with that many glasses of whiskey. He is trying to read her, like countless others have in the past, and she’s a little sad to know he will inevitably fail. She holds Natalie tightly to her, refusing to let her slip away in the whiskey-tinted haze. She can’t help but meet his eyes. “Sometimes I worry who will protect them when I’m gone.” The words are so soft that she has to lean forward to hear, placing her glass a nearby table so she can move a little closer. “This is bigger than just me,” he admits.

“It is,” she agrees. “But the world has changed since Ironman came along. If anything happens, there will be people to fill the space.” People that he can’t know about fill her mind: soldiers, agents, science experiments. Fury doesn’t know that she knows what she knows, but then that’s their job,  to know what they shouldn’t.

He quirks a smile in her direction. “You think someone can fill these shoes?”

“I said ‘people’ for a reason,” she says quickly. Natalie would look away nervously, so she does. Natasha likes eye contact in moments like these, but it can’t be helped.

He chuckles, stretching an arm out along the back of the couch. His fingers barely brush her shoulder, and she shivers in response. “Good answer,” he replies lowly, eyes tracing her face. Natasha feels trapped in the moment, a connection forming that she never intended. She never pegged Tony Stark as someone who thinks about the future, but the fact that he is concerned about Ironman beyond his death makes her reevaluate her opinion of him.

Well, not too much, she thinks as he continues to watch her with a soft smirk, which might mean whiskey is finally going to his head. She knows he had been drinking in the afternoon as well. “You know, Nat,” he whispers, “you’re beyond gorgeous.” _And there it is._ She rolls her eyes, having been expected some sort of overture. She opens her mouth to respond, but he beats her to it. “No, no, I mean, I’ve slept with a lot of girls, and they were all pretty, don’t get me wrong, but you’re like - beautiful. And smart. I can’t read you at all.” He spreads his hands out in front of him, as if to encompass her. “What do you want? Like, in life?”  
  
This breaks Natasha out of the haze; even though Tony seems earnest, little compliments like that no longer have a hold on her. Natalie blushes and gets to her feet. “I better get you into bed, Mr. Stark,” she says instead.  
  
Tony stands too, swaying once he’s on two feet. She wraps an arm around his waist, and he leans into her. His clear comfort with her closeness makes her head spin a little.  
  
She manages to deposit him on his bed. She refuses to remove any of his clothing, even his shoes; she’s not his mother, or whatever Pepper is. Natalie is in her own category.  
  
“Aren’t you gonna stay?” He tries, and she can honestly say the sex is not the temptation. Curling up next to someone who seems to like her, who isn’t afraid of her? Even if it is just Natalie he likes, saying no to that requires a spine of steel.  
  
Luckily, that is one thing Natasha has. “Good night, Tony,” she replies instead. “JARVIS, lights?”  
  
“Certainly, Miss Rushman.”  
  
She is nearly out the door when Tony speaks again. “Thank you,” he says, haltingly, “’Night, Nat.”  
  
Oh, she thinks, it’s going to hurt him now, when he finds out the truth.

  
  
-

  
  
“Is there anything real about you?” He accuses several days later. Though his tone is mostly sarcastic bluster, there is a pained undertone that she finds difficult to ignore. “Can you even speak Latin?”  
  
She rattles off a phrase to him, providing the translation when he asks. Spinning on her heel, she is ready to stride out the door when something holds her back. She tells herself it is kindness, maybe even guilt. But deep down, she knows that it’s because Tony is different. He’s not a normal mark; he’s one that she likes, that she is fond of. She already has an urge to protect, to mend.  
  
This won’t end well, she thinks, resigned, turning back to face him when she is half out of the room.  
  
“My friends really do call me Nat,” she says quietly, and then she is gone.

-

  
  
He pulls it together. Of course he does, and she’s there to provide backup, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. She doesn’t kill them; neither Fury nor Stark would be happy with her if she did, and she has standards anyway. These guys go down far too fast; it’s easier to incapacitate them when she doesn’t have her guns anyway.

Happy catches her on the way out.

“So you’re a spy then?” He asks, wiping his hands on his dress pants. She doesn’t want to freak him out, so she neglects to mention the blood stains he’s left. Instead she just looks at him; she’s sure he can fill in the blanks himself. He does, and shrugs, opening the door for her. “I’ll give you a ride to wherever you need to go,” he offers, “Boss’s orders.”

Natasha tilts her head- she hadn’t expected Tony to help her in the least after her betrayal. “I’ve got a ride, thanks,” she says, amused.

Happy shuts the car door, mumbling something about it all making sense now, how good she was in the ring. He pauses before reaching his own door, turning back to look her in the eye. “Tony’s a good guy,” he tells her, and there is a clear and deep affection in his expression. “I know your type isn’t known for, ya know, compassion or whatever, but he has a lot of it. Don’t judge him for the past couple months, okay? He’s had it hard.”

Natasha thinks this is the most she’s ever heard Happy talk. She just nods in response.

The last thing she is going to do after that talk they had in the basement is underestimate Tony Stark again. She hopes he doesn’t underestimate her either.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” Happy says before climbing into the driver’s seat.

“Maybe you will,” she gives him, but it is soft enough that she thinks he might’ve never heard it.

She catches the next flight back to DC. She has a report to write.

 

-

 

  
Iron Man: Recommended

Tony Stark: Recommended

 

  
  
-

  
  
“Nat… did you miss me?” He teases a year later in Germany.  
  
She doesn’t smirk this time. Oh no, it’s a full on grin.  
  
And just like that, everything has changed.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. The Avengers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aka tony half wants to be friends with nat and half wants to annoy the shit out of her and she can’t decide exactly what to do about it. 
> 
> you guys should probably know that i have no solid outline for this. it's just happening lol.

 

 

_ there’s glitter on the floor after the party... _

 

-

 

When they make it back to the Helicarrier, Natasha takes a seat where she can keep an eye on all the wildcards in the room. She keeps her eyes mostly focused on Loki’s brother, knowing that he is her best bet to glean information about their enemy for when Fury sends her in to interrogate him. She allows herself to watch Tony out of the corner of her eye as he spins around the room, making a scene to cover up the bug he places underneath the mainframe. It is a sly tactic for someone who rarely disguises his intentions, and he is lucky to be underestimated by the caliber and number of spies in the room. She thinks about informing Fury, but the Avengers finding out his intentions with the Cube is inevitable. Their timeline is short, and Natasha would rather have that particular information out in the open sooner rather than later. 

As the boys occupy themselves with posturing and bragging, she finds herself kneeling in front of the search screen again, checking for sights of Clint. She knows he won’t let himself be found, but she hopes against hope that they catch him before he does any real damage. He is the best of them all, with Laura and the kids to keep him human. If something happens that he can’t take back, she will have to pick up the pieces, and she isn’t sure that she is whole enough herself to heal someone else. 

Footsteps sound behind her, and she notices that there is a voice missing from the fray behind her. “Who is he?” Tony murmurs, kneeling beside her. He nods to the screen.

She stands, leaving him to get up himself. It is a distancing tactic, and it works - instead of hovering close to her once he stands, he leans away. Natasha thinks about lying, saying the man on the screen is just another agent. But Tony isn’t stupid, and Natasha refuses to be stupid enough to lose the little piece of his trust that she has. She will lose enough when the information about weaponizing the Cube comes out. “His name is Clint,” she replies after a long pause.

“Is?” Tony repeats, and she knows the question.

“Our most recent intelligence says that he’s alive,” she replies. “Loki’s staff - it can make people do things… they wouldn’t do.”

Tony’s sigh is almost inaudible, but she can read the careful step he takes toward her like a book. “Have they found a cure?” His voice is low, intimate, and she knows that he doesn’t want anyone else in this room to know he has a heart. She isn’t sure why she is the exception; he could actually want her to know he cares, but it’s far more likely that he knows she can see through him after months of seeing him at his worst and he’s just given up on hiding.

She shakes her head, looking away from him; they don’t have time for this. “Dr. Banner,” she calls, raising her voice, “I’d better take you and Stark back to the lab.”

Dr. Banner nods, showing deference that is completely incongruous to his alter-ego. “I’d appreciate that, Agent Romanoff,” he replies, eyes shifting to avoid the clear confrontation between Thor and Captain Rogers that is occurring behind him. He watches how close Tony stands to her with a curious look in his eye, and she needs to put that to bed as quickly as possible.

“Lead the way, Nat,” Tony agrees in a sing-song voice, causing the entire room to turn and look at him. They must be concerned he has a death wish, teasing her, and she wonders a little if he does. “We’re still friends, right Agent Romanoff?” 

She rolls her eyes. “Now, Tony,” she drawls, slow and wry. “Are you going to continue to act like a five year old with a sugar rush?” All the junior agents exhale collectively at the absence of anger in her tone, but they continue to stare out of the corners of their eyes.

He considers this with a spark in his eye. “Depends, do you have anything that deserves my full and serious attention? I can find your Cube-thingy with my hands tied behind my back and my eyes closed, and have us all home for dinner.” The bluster is more annoying than entertaining, so she chooses not to answer, quirking an unamused brow at him and gesturing them both to follow her. Tony catches her arm before she leaves them to go interrogate Loki. “Your friend - Clint,” he tells her, voice low in a way that it wasn’t a minute ago, that she has started to recognize as the real Tony Stark. “We’re going to find him.”

Natasha lets her agent facade drop a little, shaking her head at him. “I know you are,” she answers. “It’s what happens next that-” She stops at the horrifying possibilities that fill her mind, exiting and leaving him to watch after her.

“You know her?” Dr. Banner asks, popping a blueberry in his mouth. 

Tony grins at him, trying to shake off his worry; if Natasha is concerned about the skill level of this man, then he needs to be concerned as well. “Yeah - when I met her, she masqueraded as someone else for the first few months, and then she saved my life so I couldn’t even be mad.” 

Bruce just sighs, typing in his search algorithm. “You guys are too complicated for me - I can’t wait for this to be over.”

Tony nods, but inside he is unsure. A part of him knows that this crazy situation is unlikely to end without a fight.

 

 

-

 

 

The explosion catches them off guard. 

Fury should have known that these fighters that punch first, ask questions later - not that he knows much about the Thunder God, but he can assume after the report from last year - could never work as a team without something more to tie them together. This experiment has been a failure. 

He stands, coughing, barking orders into his earpiece. Thor has already flown out, presumably to find the battle or guard his brother. Banner and Romanoff have fallen to the lower level, which concerns him deeply but he can do nothing but put his trust in her ability to calm the man and the beast down. He assumes Rogers and Stark will go to fix the engine.

“Put on the suit,” Rogers breathes, with anger completely absent from his voice, reaffirming his suspicions. 

But Stark surprises him. “Wait a sec,” he gasps, stumbling through the broken glass to get to the window where the other two have fallen. “Okay, Nat?”

If Fury were anyone other than the world’s top international spy, his eyebrows would have hit his hairline. As it is, he listens carefully.

“We’re fine,” Romanoff calls up, her voice calm and clear in such a blatant lie that Fury can’t help but be impressed. Unfortunately, the inhuman grunts from Dr. Banner tell a different story. 

“I’ll get the suit - be back in a minute, tops,” Stark calls back, already moving to the exit.

“Stark, go fix the engine,” she shouts back, voice hard - Fury hears the pain, likely imperceptible to anyone but himself, hiding underneath the command; she must have injured herself in the fall.

“Nat-” Stark tries.

“Tony, we’re fine, go  _ now _ .” 

Fury watches as several emotions flit across Stark’s face - confusion, panic, frustration -  before he nods to himself, tearing from the room in pursuit of Rogers. Seconds later, Fury hears the roar of the Hulk.

But he still takes a moment to tuck this information in his memory. He had been surprised when Natasha recommended Stark for the Avengers initiative, but he sees a little of what had driven her to that choice now - in the way that Stark decides to let logic win over his emotions. 

Evidently, the two had gotten closer during her tenure as his assistant than Natasha had let on.

“Romanoff? Get him to the hangar,” he orders. Heavy breathing is the only response he receives, but he takes it as a good sign that he can still hear her breathe at all. 

Five minutes later, the Asgardians and the Hulk are gone, Natasha has taken down Barton, and they are still in the air. Fury kneels over one of his best agents as his eyes glaze over for what could be the last time, if Project Tahiti doesn’t work.

Natasha comes to see the body with Rogers and Stark in tow. Her breath hitches slightly at the sight of her SO of a decade, lying there lifeless. Stark hesitantly reaches forward to touch her shoulder, but she shakes him off, leaving the room most likely in search of Barton.   
  
Tony looks after her for a long moment before turning his grave and tired look back to Coulson.   
  
And even in Fury’s quiet grief, he thinks, yes - this is something he can use.

“We have to protect the people we care about,” is how he ends his speech to Captain American and Iron man, complete with bloody trading cards and the oppressive grip of guilt holding all three of them hostage. Rogers is convinced by Coulson, and maybe Stark is too, but Fury lets his gaze linger in the direction of the medbay. Stark’s eyes land in the same direction, and they solidify into a feeling that Fury knows well.

“Tell Romanoff to suit up,” Stark tells Rogers. “And keep an eye out for Banner. I’ll meet you at the Tower.”

Oh, he can definitely use this. 

 

 

-

 

 

Clint finds his best friend in the wreckage of Stark Tower’s lobby, which is surprisingly minimal for the scale of the battle that just happened. He has just spent a long time gazing at the battered  _ ‘A’ _ left on the tower, but Clint is not superstitious or sentimental. This Initiative has saved the world, but there is no room for the six of them together in times of peace. 

Natasha is sitting cross-legged on the floor, stitching up a gash on her forehead with a bottle of vodka at her feet and a grimy mirror as her only guide. “Now this is exactly like Budapest,” he murmurs in greeting, taking the needle from her and tying off the last stitch.

“If Budapest had gods and monsters and genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropists,” she replies, taking a long drink from the bottle. “You have anything you need done?”

Clint shakes his head. “Nah, my scratches are pretty superficial. But I’ll be glad to not do  _ this _ again.” He gestures to the mess around them with a careless, tired arm. This whole thing is way out of their comfort zone. Clint is looking forward to an easy, reconnaissance mission and a week off with his family. 

“Yeah,” Natasha agrees, but Clint is an international spy and her best friend. She might’ve been able to fool him right after he had woken up, but he refuses to let her hide her feelings this time. She has been acting completely unlike herself, enjoying the banter with these giants they are fighting beside with a genuine smirk on her face. This whole thing is way out of their league, and she _ enjoys  _ it. Well, as much as one can enjoy a fight with a loss spelling certain doom for the planet. But Natasha has thrived under the pressure, and he cannot ignore her words from before.  _ We have to stop him. Now you sound like you. _

_ But you don’t _ , he had said, and he still means it. Natasha lives with him in the shadows; that’s how they’ve always preferred it. He went with her because he wanted to watch her back and put an arrow through Loki’s skull. She went… well, that’s what he means to figure out. 

“You want this, don’t you? This team?” His question is half-joking, half-serious, which might as well sum up his character. He knows that Natasha has never been truly happy as a SHIELD agent, and if this is an opportunity to repay her for all the times she’s watched his six, then he needs to understand why this is important to her. She’s his best friend; if playing the Avengers angle makes her happy, he’ll do it.

“I’ve been compromised,” she says for the second time, but it sounds different. She sounds different.

“By Loki?” Clint asks, pushing harder. “No, you don’t get to pull the wool over my eyes, Tasha. Loki is just another victim of yours - skilled? Yes. But no matter what he knew about your past…” Clint swallows hard. “No matter what I told him-”

Natasha is already shaking her head. “Clint, no,” she says, but he knows he will blame himself for a long time, her interjections notwithstanding.

Still, he keeps ploughing through her distractions. “You had full control over that interrogation; I don’t need to see it to know,” he tells her. “What you didn’t have control over is this team. This superhero shit. The unnatural and dangerous and frankly, extremely weird and lucky way that this all worked out.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says.

Clint just looks at her. “I’m not so sure,” he replies, but he decides he is done pushing. This is day zero of being a hero. Clint resolves to listen and observe a while yet. “You go ahead up,” he says instead; she gives him her own version of a grateful look, which is just a blank stare that he likes to imagine is grateful. Sure makes things run smoother. “Stark likes you better than he likes me anyway.”

“He doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me.”

“- that’s an overstatement,” a voice comes from the elevator. Tony Stark steps out, sauntering over to the pair of agents. “One, you’d never let me throw you anywhere so we’re gonna need a new unit of trust to measure, and two, if we’re sticking with the throwing metaphor, you’d have to be within an inch of me at all times to show _ just _ how little I trust you.”

“I’m sure you’d love that,” Clint sniggers back. 

Tony gapes at him for less than a second before he pulls it together. “A SHIELD agent with a sense of humor? I thought you guys were all robots.”

“You sure thought I was a robot when you blasted the building I was standing on a few hours ago,” Clint offers.

“And when you shot at me while I was trying to save your ass from an alien in your blind spot,” Natasha adds.

Tony sputters at him. “Okay, you,” he begins, pointing to Clint, “were getting swarmed and needed to get off that building anyway, and you,” he points to Natasha, who is hiding a smile, “were in an alien air-motorcycle - and trust me, I can’t believe those words came out of my mouth either- and I can’t be expected to see everything,” he laments. 

Clint rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna go wait in the car, Tasha. He’s your problem.”

“Excuse me-” Tony begins indignantly, but Clint has already disappeared. “Damn, he really is a spy.”

Natasha folds her arms over her chest, standing straight. “Fury wants me to debrief you before we leave.”

“You can de-brief me all you want,” he leers with a teasing sparkle in his eye, before he breaks into laughter. “I’m sorry, that was really bad - really, really bad - in my defense, I haven’t slept in like, seventy-two hours.”

Natasha shrugs. “Neither have I, and you don’t see me making bad puns,” she deadpans.

Tony grins. “Oh, and you have a sense of humor too!” He exclaims. “Who knew? Also,” he continues, grin still in place, “now I know your secret: you do like me.”

Natasha shakes her head, hiding her smile. “And what makes you think that?”

“Does ‘ _ c’mon Stark’ _ ring a bell?” He asks, pitching his voice in a facsimile of her smokey, low tones. 

“I didn’t want you to die,” she agrees. “Doesn’t mean I like you.”

“It’s good enough in my book - and you can’t take it back,” he wags a finger at her. “That’s gonna be the title of my autobiography:  _ Tony Stark: Hero and Super Scary Spy Natasha Romanoff Likes Me and Even Smiled At My Joke Once. _ ” 

Natasha widens her eyes, then narrows them. “I’m a SHIELD agent,” she tells him, closing off at once. “I’m an ex-Russian spy.” She smiles then, but it doesn’t reach eyes. “There’s nothing about me that’s hero material,” she quips. 

Tony’s smile fades, realizing that he hit a nerve. He looks at her for a long moment, and Natasha wonders what he sees. Normally, men call her gorgeous, but she has a gash in her forehead and her hair is greasy and covered in alien blood. Her suit is ripped, her fingers are singed and bleeding, and she is emotionally exhausted for the first time in a long time. 

Tony doesn’t look at her like she’s gorgeous, though, and why would he? He’s seen plenty of beautiful women. Instead, there is something like deep admiration and respect in his gaze, and the lack of smirk or smile makes her believe that either he’s not really seeing her at all, or he’s seeing far more of her than she’s comfortable with him seeing. “You saved the world, Nat,” he begins, still without a trace of teasing. “The other kids, they might’ve not been paying attention, but  _ I  _ was. We were only reacting to what came out of that hole in the sky - you used your head. Gave me a place to put that missile and figured out how to close it in one.” He puts a hand on her shoulder, wary of her personal space, and she lets him this time; she’s that stunned. “I’ll deny ever saying this-” and here, finally, there’s a hint of a smirk - “but today, you were the hero. Not the rest of us.”

“Just today?” She asks wryly, hoping to draw out a lighter Tony Stark. If she were any less a spy, she would be averting her eyes for how uncomfortable this all is.

Tony grins, recognizing that he might have overstepped slightly. He pulls his hand back. “Yep, every other day, I’m the hero and you know it.” 

She gives him a small smile, and proceeds to debrief him. To his credit, Tony only interrupts several times, and she’s grateful. Clint and she have three more Avengers to talk to, and all of them are in a post-Shawarma haze where it would really be nice to finally get into a bed. 

“You kids need a bed for the night?” Tony asks when she is done. “One time offer,” he adds, but his expression is earnest; he doesn’t mean it.

“Clint and I have a debriefing with Fury,” she replies, a little apologetic, “and then we’re being flown out.”

“Goddamn, maybe you SHIELD agents are all robots,” he teases, but she can hear the undercurrent of concern in his voice. 

“The world doesn’t stop spinning because we stopped one psychopathic god,” she murmurs. He doesn’t want her to go, she realizes. Why would he not want her to go? “I’d better make sure Clint isn’t causing trouble.” She gives Tony a small smile, moving for the door before she turns back one last time. “And Tony?” He raises an eyebrow, encouraging her to continue. “Thanks.” She puts some feeling behind it; Tony Stark, she has realized, is annoying and rude and arrogant and wrong, a lot of the time. But he’s a good man, and she has to admit after all this, she does like him.

Not that he ever needs to know.

“You got it, Red,” he says. He thinks about adding some goodbye tacked on the end of it - maybe  _ see you around _ , or  _ call me if you’re in town _ , but she’s already on her way out. He watches her leave, and he’ll never admit to it, but he stands there awhile, thinking about the conversation that JARVIS played him when he was traveling down to meet them on the elevator. He feels a little guilty about eavesdropping, but they were on his turf. They should know better.

Natasha had said she was compromised. By them, by what they just did. Tony thinks of the way he felt, standing over Loki. Trusting the people around him completely for several hours, letting Thor and Cap work off of him and giving Clint the pleasure of pressing an arrow into his captor’s face. He thinks about Hulk’s arms catching him as he fell, of the contentment at the Shawarma restaurant, for once feeling like there were no judging eyes, no false smiles. Everyone just… was.

A few days later, he thinks about it again. Now, Thor has taken Loki back to their home, Steve has left for DC to settle into his new role as a SHIELD agent, and Bruce has vanished, thankfully taking some of Tony’s state of the art medical equipment with him. Clint and Natasha are in the wind, each in unreachable places. There is a part of him - and how big it is, Tony refuses to admit - that feels empty when he thinks of them.

Maybe, just maybe, Tony might be compromised too. 

“... Yeah, Pep? Sorry, I’m fine, I promise - get on the next plane and we’ll start rebuilding- but yeah, those plans? Sorry, honey, I’m gonna need you to pull the architect. We need to remodel the five floors under ours…”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had some trouble with explaining nat's feelings here - but basically i rewatched the avengers and she's like,,, really going for it when she talks to clint. she doesn't sound anything like herself, and keep in mind, she has no real friends or family - the avengers becomes her family. it makes sense to me that she would want this a lot more than anyone else, especially clint. she's always thinking of every possible future, and the one she sees with the avengers satisfies something she's never had.
> 
> and ofc, tony's a sentimental little shit and wants friends too- and there is something about natasha's mask that makes him want to poke and prod until it falls apart. (hint: it will)


	3. The Mandarin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aand we're up to im3! i dislike this movie which is why this took me so long

 

  _hold on to the memories_  
_they will hold on to you_  

 

  
It’s a dead end. He has nowhere to turn, no resources left but a dysfunctional suit. Even JARVIS is gone, fizzled out into nothingness. If he stays here much longer, he will freeze.

So of course, when he is at the lowest point imaginable, she shows up, not a hair out of place. She looks like an angel to his addled mind, the fur of her parka lining her red hair like a halo.

She looks like an angel - if an angel could kill a man just by looking at him.

“Ah, Agent Romanoff, what a surprise,” he half-sings, looking up at her from the ground. The cold is clearly not affecting her at all as she kneels next to him.

“Can you get up?” She asks, an odd note of concern permeating her voice.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, hold on,” he replies, tugging the broken pieces of the suit off his body. She just watches him, waiting for something. “Fury send you?” He asks, just to fill the awkward silence.

She pauses. “He doesn’t know I’m here,” she says finally. Her eyes dart away for a split second; is she embarrassed? Is she just giving off the illusion of embarrassment? He suddenly remembers why she frustrates him so much.

“And here I thought he dictated your every move,” he jeers. In any other situation, he would probably be at least a little thankful, but his house was just blown up, Happy is in the hospital, and he doesn’t know where the fuck he is.

Instead of the non-reaction he expects, Natasha actually flinches a little. “Don’t talk about things you don’t know about, Stark,” she retorts, beginning to pack the remains of his suit onto a small sled that he is just now noticing behind her. “C’mon, you’re going to freeze to death.”

“And you’re not?”

“I thought I was just a robot who does whatever Fury says,” she shoots back, doing nothing as he stumbles to his feet. “There’s a house half a mile from here, and we need to lie low - we’ll spend the night there.”

They end up holing up in some kid’s garage. Natasha makes herself scarce while Tony works with the kid to rebuild the suit. Natasha eventually returns with an eclectic mix of weapons; some are SHIELD-caliber and others are tied together with string and tape, obviously homemade. He tries to imagine Natasha buying all this stuff in a Walmart, and he finds it impossible. Okay, maybe not impossible.

Okay, it’s Natasha. Totally possible.

He can’t help by feel comforted by her familiar presence; he doesn’t know what he’d do if he were alone. He’d figure it out, of course, but Natasha always seems to know exactly what she’s doing, every movement and thought purposeful.

He tinkers away into the night, pushing off sleep, knowing the nightmares that await him when he inevitably succumbs.

 

-

 

When the bad guys find them in Tennessee, they split up to take them down. After a short, grueling fight, Natasha hot-wires a car while Tony says goodbye to the kid.

“So we’re headed to Miami,” Natasha says as he walks up to her, watching as she secrets her knives, guns, and gadgets all over her body before throwing her bag into the backseat.

“Look, Romanoff, I’m fine. I’m alive. I’m sure you had a mission you left to come here.” She just looks at him. “This isn’t your fight,” he tries.

She shrugs. “It’s not,” she agrees. “I’m not the one who pissed off a terrorist to the point where he bombed my unnecessarily exorbitant house.”

Tony leans against the car, rubbing his forehead. The snow is coming down hard, and he really wants to get on the road. Talking to this woman is like navigating a minefield. “Okay, can we be real for a minute?”

“This is as real as I get,” she replies, voice so neutral that it gives him a headache.

“That’s bullshit!” He points at her, shaking his finger. “You cared about Barton, about me when I went through that portal - I know what you’re capable of.”

Suddenly she is in his face, teeth bared. His heart skips a beat, and he couldn’t say that it’s not from fear. “You have _no idea_ what I’m capable of.” There is a dead silence between them; she drives them to the garage so they can get the rest of their stuff. “I’m coming, Tony,” she says as they get out of the car. “Let it alone.”

He watches her pack in silence. She moves efficiently and quickly through this small space. She has none of the fake femininity of Natalie, with her soft smiles and swaying hips. Her walk is straight and her hair is unstyled. It’s insane how attractive she still is to him, even though the mystery is gone - she’s been sleeping on the couch across from him, and he’s pretty sure the mystery would disappear for anyone after that experience. He loves Pepper, he does, but there is something incredibly intriguing about Natasha.

He waits until they load the car before he speaks again. “The Avengers…” Tony trails off. “I thought they were a one time thing.”

Natasha shrugs. “Maybe they were - but this isn’t about the Avengers. This is bigger than just you, Tony. I don’t care if you won’t ask for my help; I’m going to give it to you anyway.”

And even though she’s already going to help him, Tony is appropriately chastised. He grins over at her as she climbs into the driver’s seat. “Nat, I’m in over my head. Will you help me?” He jokes, but he keeps his eyes on her; there is a part of him that’s apologizing, and he wants her to see it.

  
Natasha smiles her small, genuine smile, the one that he can’t help but love to pull out of her. “You know I will,” she says with a hint of warmth infusing her tone, even if she rolls her eyes at him while she says it.

 

-

 

Natasha watches from the boat with Rhodey as Tony somehow saves thirteen people from certain death. Rhodey gasps, but Natasha can’t take her eyes off the figure of Iron Man, zooming towards the abandoned oil tanker. She blinks and sees hope.

  

-

  

It’s almost fun, when it goes down.

Tony laughs at Rhodey’s quips as he is denied a suit, watching him expertly get the President down. The President is the least of Natasha’s worries, nor does she need a suit; she hitches a ride on the back of one, once, and Tony can’t help but chuckle.

It’s not fun at all, anymore, not when he finds Pepper gasping and crying under the rubble.

“Nat, report,” he orders. “C’mon, honey,” he says to Pepper, reaching his hand out to her.

“You’re gonna need to buy me flowers first, _honey_ ,” Natasha replies drily, pained yells in the background of her earpiece.

The rubble shifts again, and Pepper screams in agony. Tony doesn’t need to repeat himself to Natasha, whose voice goes hard at the sound. “ETA two minutes,” she tells him before things go silence on her end.

Two minutes is not enough time; Killian shows up in fifteen seconds, and soon Tony finds himself reaching desperately out to the first person who ever truly saw him, both their eyes wild. He screams at her to take his hand.

She tries.

And then she slips through Tony’s grasp, and all he can do is scream. He stares down after her, helpless, when a dark figure with a blur of red launches herself into the air several levels below.

For a moment, everything is still.

Then Natasha grabs Pepper by the arm, both women yelling as the jarring impact of stopping Pepper’s fall mostly likely dislocates both their shoulders. They fall for a split second longer before the invisible wire around Natasha’s other wrist pulls taunt, leaving them hanging in space.

Tony gets his voice back. “Nat!” He yells, ragged and desperate.

Natasha shakes her hair out of her face, looking up at him, her expression going from pained to stricken. “Behind you!” she shouts, and Tony barely turns in time to block a hit from Killian.

“JARVIS, the girls,” he orders - his words are barely coherent but JARVIS understands, sending a suit to help Natasha and Pepper.

Natasha tears her eyes away from the fight, looking down at Pepper. Her grip is slipping, and it doesn’t help that Pepper’s skin is so hot from the Extremis that Natasha is sure to have burns when this is all over. “Hold on, Miss Potts,” she gasps, digging her nails into Pepper’s wrists.

“I think at this point you should call me Pepper,” Pepper tries to laugh, but it comes out as a cough. “I have to let go,” she admits.

The suit swoops in at the last moment, taking Pepper gently in its arms and flying her to the ground. Unsure if the suit will come back for her, Natasha takes a deep breath and starts to climb as fast as she can.

“Agent Romanoff,” comes a relievingly familiar voice from behind her. “May I escort you to the ground?”

Natasha sighs, wrapping an arm around the robot’s neck. “Thanks, JARVIS,” she replies. The suit lowers her carefully, obviously wary of her many injuries. Pepper waits for her on the ground, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Are you okay?” They ask each other at the same time before giving the other a wry smile.

“We need to get out of here,” Pepper orders. “Did Rhodey get the President?”

Natasha nods, hugging her arm close to her. Extremis has obviously done a number on Pepper if she’s not feeling anything from that fall. “We’re not leaving - or I’m not leaving, and Stark would kill me if I let you out of my sight.” She’s breathing hard, but her eyes are angry. “Killian’s on the loose, and we need to figure out how to reverse engineer whatever’s inside you.”

She scans the ground, eyes coming to rest on an undetonated, small missile from one of the exploded suits. The suit’s gauntlet is resting right next to it.

“Tony’s suits recognize your biosignature, right?” She asks Pepper, who nods. “How’s your aim?”

Pepper smirks. “Last week, I hit Tony in the back of the head with a file from about twenty feet away.”

Natasha grins back, picking up the small projectile. She tosses it into the air, letting it fall back into her palm before closing her fist around it. “I have an idea.”

Six minutes later, Natasha launches the projectile at Killian and Pepper follows it with a blast from the gauntlet. Tony gathers Pepper into his arms, and Natasha leaves them to their moment, ignoring the slight squeeze she feels in her heart from the lack of arms waiting to hold her.

 

-

 

Tony finds Natasha at the hospital, sitting on a counter, kicking her feet as she waits for an update on Pepper. The atmosphere of the hallway is frantically busy, but their eyes meet across it with no problems.

“She okay?” She asks when Tony approaches her, feet still swinging. He instinctively stops them with his hands, flinching immediately as he expects her to kick him away. For some reason, she doesn’t, instead letting them fall away slowly. He leans up against the counter.

“Yeah,” he says, exhaling all the tension in his body with that one word.

Natasha’s gaze is unreadable. “Miss Potts is tough,” she says, and he can’t help but feel that it’s not what she intended to say. “She can take it.”

Tony laughs, but it is hollow and brittle. “She doesn’t deserve any of this - what I put her through.” He leans back further, propping himself up on his elbow, looking up at her with a self-deprecating arch of his brow. “Do you know how many times she’s thought I was dead? If it’s…” he trails off, then his voice goes low. “If it’s anything like how I felt for those seconds before you caught her, then I don’t know how she-”

Tony is silent then, letting his head hang down; after a few moments, he feels a strong hand grip his shoulder. He wonders what she’ll say to try to make this better. Will she tell him that Pepper’s good for him? That she’s strong? That they’ll make it work?

No, he knows Natasha. Her very existence is shrouded in lies, but she would not lie to him in this. He has to believe that. “What we do,” Natasha says carefully, hand still pressed to his shoulder. “What we are… it’s difficult to understand.”

He is struck by the absurdity of the situation. Natasha has seen him at his lowest, has studied him and evaluated him. He truly thought at one point that there was nothing real about her, with her smirks and her smoldering eyes and the sharp set of her shoulders. But now, after her actions at his party and with Loki and saving Pepper just now, he knows he had been wrong. The tentative, soft look in her eyes is the same one he saw when she jogged up to him after Bruce had caught him falling from the wormhole, the same that she had worn when she applied concealer under his eye before his birthday party, the same when he had called her a hero.

 _Oh_ , he has misjudged her.

He thinks about his urge after the battle with Loki, the impulse to ask her to stop by sometime. He doesn’t see any reason to hold back anymore.

So he nods sharply, acknowledging her words, before changing the subject. “Call me if you’re in town, okay?” It comes out surprisingly comfortable, even natural, and the twinge of uncertainty he feels is validated by the surprised, genuine smile that spreads across Natasha’s face. It is a small thing, but it makes her so beautiful that his breath catches a little. “I mean it; don’t be a stranger,” he adds, cementing his seriousness.

In an uncharacteristic move, she doesn’t tease him, reaching up to press a light kiss to his cheek. “Sure, Tony,” she agrees.

“And Nat?” She turns back. “Thanks. For everything.”

Her smile turns teasing. “Careful, Stark; you might regret being so nice to me when I break into your Tower in the middle of the night.”

He chuckles. “And I bet you’re still gonna break in, even if I give you a key.” Not that there’s a key to the Tower, but he’s trusting her to connect the dots.

“Gotta keep you on your toes,” she replies, smooth and sure, “Pepper tells me that you operate far too close to death for comfort, and I’m inclined to believe her after everything I’ve witnessed.”

With that, she winks at him and disappears, leaving Tony to wonder if the whole conversation had been a dream.

His phone pings, and he looks down to see a text from a blocked number.

 _To return the sentiment_ , it reads, followed by coordinates. He traces them to a small cottage in the mountains in North Carolina, recognizing that she is returning his offer of a safe space with one of her own.

Somehow, it is the most intimate exchange he has ever been a part of, and he can’t help the smile that blooms across his face.

  

_afterwards_

 

“You were amazing out there, honey,” he is saying at her side in the hospital when it happens. “You were incredible - so strong; I’m so lucky.”

And the sad thing is he knows. He can tell by the way her lips aren’t even raising at the corners from the way he’s dancing around in front of her. He can tell by the fact she is not red in the face, scolding him for running away and being Iron Man and letting her go and the extensive litany other dumb shit he just did. She’s just looking at him, resigned and silent, waiting for her turn to speak.

To ward off what’s coming, he rambles on for a few more minutes and she lets him, his best friend, the first woman who has ever loved him for him. When he finally shuts up, she fixes him with a soft look.

“Tony…”

And there it is.

He cuts her off. “Pep… you don’t need to waste any more words on me.”

She glares at him, and oh - there’s the woman he loves. “Yes, I do. You deserve to hear what I’m going to say, and I deserve to hear it.” She pauses. “I thought I understood everything about Tony Stark. I didn’t really understand Iron Man, but that was okay, because that was only going to be who you were when it was necessary. But that’s not true, is it? After New York, after this, I can’t avoid the truth any longer. Tony Stark is Iron Man.”

Tony opens his mouth, but she shakes her head. “No, we have to have this conversation. Tony, I can’t understand that part of you. And I can’t live like this, not knowing when you’re going to have an easy win or when you’re going to fly through a wormhole to save the world. It’s noble, and wonderful, and it’s your calling - but I can’t.”

Tony looks at her for a long time before nodding, bending over to press his lips to her hand.

“I understand.”

It’s over.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it for tony and pep! she'll still be popping up as a bff, don't worry, but now i get to start building tony and nat's romantic relationship and i'm so excited!!
> 
> let me know if you liked it<3

**Author's Note:**

> comment if you want more feelings <3 up next, the avengers!!


End file.
